1. XBOSoft Presents
Remote Agile
Testing

2. XBOSoft Info
Founded in 2006
Dedicated to software quality
Software QA Consulting
Software Testing
Offices in San Francisco, Beijing, Oslo, and
Amsterdam

3. Housekeeping
• Everyone except the speakers are muted
• Questions via the gotowebinar control on the right side of your
screen
• Questions can be asked throughout the webinar, we’ll try to fit
them in when appropriate
• General Q & A at the end of the webinar
• You will receive info on recording and slides after the webinar

4. Speakers
Jan Princen, Board member XBOSoft,
Founder of Grip QA.
Pim Smeets, Project manager XBOSoft
manages remotes agile test teams in
China.
Sabrina Gasson, Marketing at XBOSoft.

5. Why agile?

7. Agile Manifesto:
• Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
• Working software over comprehensive documentation
• Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
• Responding to change over following a plan
Many Flavors
What is agile?

9. Pim’s Project
• Financial Software
• Dutch UI / specifications
• Located in:
– 3 countries
– 2 times zones
– 3 mother tongues
– 6 scrum (-ish) teams

10. Hard to work with teams in different
locations?
China and the
Netherlands have a 6 hour
time difference
‘A day in the life of a tester in China’
• 09:00 Review ‘to do’ tasks on TFS
• 09:30 - 5 minutes - Internal standup: What
will you do? How long do you need? Need
help from colleagues?
• 13:00: pre-grooming, if needed
• 14:00-15:00 Netherlands gets to office
• 15:00-16:00 standup meetings (Weekly
Groomings / Bi Weekly retrospectives)
• - 18:00+ Discuss with developers in
Europe / wrap up.

12. English is hard for everyone
Dutch specs:
• Dutch Lessons
• Translation software
• Pre groomings
Certain personality type does well
Commitment of both sides
Cultural / language differences

13. Communication
Person A Person B
Cultural framework of
reference
Language
Proficiency
Confidence
Factors influencing
communication

14. Communication
Important in agile
– Especially with distributed teams
Daily stand ups
Weekly grooming
Continuous
- email, IM, video

15. Agile is all about people
• English language
• Cultural sensitivity
• Independent
• Creative, strong logic
Not everyone can work in an
Agile team!

16. Agile Tools

17. SITs
Self Improvement Teams
• Short optimization projects (5-10 hours total)
• Cross teams
• Both local (Beijing) and distributed
• One condition: provides future business value
Past SITs:
• POC CodedUI / Selenium
• SQL / Bash scripting
• Quality / code metrics
• Risk analysis

18. Automation
• Essential in Agile
• Daily automated regression
tests
• ‘Record and playback’ too
fragile: built our own
framework
• Using Selenium / C# /
Specflow

19. Keeping Remote Teams Involved
• How to keep remote teams involved?
• Visit once a year
• Involve everyone in all
meetings (even if that
can prove hard in
practice)
• Make jokes, build
personal relationships
• Three locations, one
team

21. Increase Velocity
• 24/7
• “longer” work days
• Continuous

22. Q & A
Follow us on twitter:
@xbosoft

23. Thanks!
You can reach us at:
www.xbosoft.com
services@xbosoft.com